Comment du Jour: “…my demolition contractor ripped out the one tree I was supposed to save”

For the new readers, the comment du jour is our way of saying thanks to those that participate in commenting, and a way to show all of you that don’t comment just what kind of good stuff you’re missing. Today’s comment du jour comes from Sparky in “Should I even Start a Blog” after we suggested he, the Fluj, and Alex sit down and have a little chat about the future of blogging real estate in SF:

I am not savvy about the blogosphere, but funny, interesting or horrible things happen to me at work every day. So I can write about that.

Since I wrote the above, my demolition contractor ripped out the one tree I was supposed to save at a house, and now me and the home owner have to pull it out of the dumpster and have a ceremony and tell it “we are sorry it was a mistake”. Dead Serious.

Isn’t there a city ordinance that says if you pull out a tree that is of certain circumference or more, “we are sorry” is not good enough and, you have to replace it with a new one? I believe the limit is 18″?

But this time, because of the high price of oil, all bets are off. The input prices are very high for these consumer staples — costs more to make coca cola because of high price of corn fructose; costs more to make alcohol because of high price of barley and other grains, etc (a pint of beer is $6 now?). Industrial chemicals also are increasing the input price of procter & gamble.

Since consumers are already tapped out (can’t use their homes as piggy banks anymore), and real salary is decreasing, and unemployment is down, there is no way these companies can increase the prices for their products — so they have to eat it; that makes their projected revenue figures completely unreliable, and therefore you can’t put your money in their stocks anymore.

It will get worse. And there seems to be very few places to hide right now.

Some ideas: long on Costco, Walmart, Gold, Energy Exploration. Energy producing countries like Russia and Brazil.

Pint are not $6 everywhere, and not called pints everywhere. That’s an SF price. The biggest cost in alcohol production is the bottle/can. Not the vodka/beer.

Per what anon8mizer says, maybe nationally people are “tapped out” and unemployement is up, but not around here. I’m sure there are options out there better that 3.5%. For that matter, I’ll give you better than that if you invest it with me.